Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
TA-NEHISI COATESReparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
TA-NEHISI COATES